Now search for blood group just a click away

Taking its e-governance initiatives a step further, the Food and Drug Control Administration of Gujarat has now made the search for blood of particular type together with its availability at the nearest blood bank just a click away.

Data from all 152 blood banks in the state gets updated realtime on the FDCA website, and now the drug controller is also mulling an sms model for the same.

"Data from all the blood banks in the state is getting updated regularly on our website, so that users (patients, doctors and hospitals) have access to the information. Also, we have added a feature to have an user-id and password, whereby any user can search the website for a particular blood group type and where it is available," said H G Koshia, commissioner of Gujarat FDCA. He claimed that no other state in the country currently has this facility through its drug controller.

The FDCA website has been developed by the national informatics centre (NIC), and also shares data on spurious drugs. The FDCA is now mulling to start an sms model for the blood bank facility, making the search faster. Gujarat is also the first state in the country to implement an online drug alert system for retailers through short messaging service (SMS).

It recently launched an upgraded version of the system, whereby a consumer can send an sms to the FDCA mentioning the batch number of a particular medicine he has bought and would get an instant reply on whether the drug is fake or not.

Meanwhile, states like Bihar and West Bengal have recently approached the state FDCA for guidance as to replicating several e-governance models which includes online licensing system and sms-alert for fake drugs.

"A delegation from Bihar recently visited us to understand the various e-governance initiatives taken by us, West Bengal too is keen to adopt some of the initiatives," Koshia informed.

The FDCA has also taken steps to include a detailed list of chemists who stock lifesaving drugs. Also, laboratory test reports of drugs that are tested by the FDCA for quality issues is also provided in the website.

During the current fiscal, the budget allocation for the FDCA has almost doubled to Rs 39 crore, up from around Rs 19-20 crore last year.